Tag Archives: new elements

I’m a chemist (no, really? I hear you cry) and like all chemists, I love the periodic table. Why do we love this weird grid of boxes and letters and numbers? Because it’s awesome, that’s why.

No, really, it is. Can physics or biology summarise pretty much everything important about their subject with one, single page of information? (Hint: nope.) But chemists have been able to do just that for the best part of 150 years.

The person we have to thank (mostly) for this brilliant bit of insight is one Dmitri Mendeleev. He was born in Siberia in February 1834 (there’s a bit of an issue with the exact date due to the Russian switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1918 but most sources seem to have settled on the 8th). He was the youngest of more than 10 children, but the really incredible bit about his story is that when he was just 15 years old his mother took him to Moscow, a journey of best part of 1000 miles. There were, at this time, some freshly-built stretches of railway, but make no mistake, it would’ve been a long and difficult trip.

Mendeleev’s mother wanted her youngest son to attend the University of Moscow. But when they got there, the University refused to accept him. So they moved on to the Main Pedagogical Institute in Saint Petersburg, which fortunately had more sense.

So the periodic table is amazing, and if anything its creator was even more so. But what I actually want to do in this post is list some of my most favourite periodic table sites. There are few out there, and they contain a host of useful information above and beyond the standard atomic weight, atomic mass type-stuff. So, without further ado…

Sir Martyn Poliakoff recording for Periodic Videos

Periodic Videos – produced by Nottingham University, this has a video for each element in the periodic table, including the newest ones. The videos all feature the gloriously-haired Sir Martyn Poliakoff and are great fun to watch.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Periodic Table – particularly useful for students, as you can mouseover each element and key information such as electronic configuration appears in a little box on the same page – no clicking required. It’s really fast and easy to use. And if you do click on an element, a host of extra information appears above and beyond the usual history and uses, such as links to podcasts, videos and information about supply risk.

The Periodic Table of Tech – this one is particularly focused on what the elements are used for. You might learn, for example, that californium isotopes are used to detect landmines, or that zirconium isn’t just good for making cubic zirconia gems; it’s also used in nuclear fuel rods. What I particularly like about this is that it has all the information on one page, so it’s particularly easy to browse.

There will be many others which I haven’t mentioned. If you have a different favourite, do comment below!

After lots of speculation over the last few months, the names of the new elements were finally announced by IUPAC yesterday. There will now be a five-month public review, ending on 8 November 2016, but it looks likely that these names will be accepted. They are:

113: Nihonium, Nh, from ‘Nihon’, meaning Japan or ‘The Land of the Rising Sun’, home of RIKEN;

115: Moscovium, Mc, in recognition of the Moscow region, where JINR is based;

IUPAC does have rules about naming. Namely: “Elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist.”

Now, mythological concept… that might be a bit flexible, mightn’t it? What’s the definition of mythology? Well, according to dictionary.com, it’s: “a body of myths, as that of a particular people or that relating to a particular person.” And the definition of myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.”

So I propose that element 117, falling as it does in group 17 (the halogens), be named octarine, in honour of the late, great, Terry Pratchett and his phenomenally successful Discworld books. I’m also proposing the symbol Oc (pronounced, of course, as ‘ook’*).

As a halogen, 117 ought to have an ‘ine’ ending, so octarine makes perfect sense. Over 70 million Pratchett books have been sold worldwide, in 37 different languages, and lots of them concern heroes, gods and monsters. Ok, they’re not quite as old as the Greek myths, but they will be one day, right? Time is relative and all that.

Octarine, in the Discworld books, is known as ‘the colour of magic’, which also forms the title of Pratchett’s first ever Discworld book. According to Disc mythology (see, mythology), octarine is visible only to wizards and cats, and is generally described as a sort of greenish-yellow purple colour. Something that’s difficult to find and hard to observe; what could be more perfect?

Since I started this, one or two devoted Discworld fans have commented that I should have suggested that element 118 be named octiron instead. This is because in Discworld the number 8 has special significance, and also because octiron is the metal which is the source of magical energy, and hence leads to octarine, which is just the colour of magic.

But I’m sticking with 117 and octarine. The greenish-yellow purple description seems perfect for a new halogen, and the ‘ine’ ending is just right for group 17. Although octiron also has the right ending for group 18 (‘on’), it doesn’t quite fit since it’s a metal and group 18 is technically made up of noble gases (admittedly, when you’ve only got a couple of atoms of a thing, metal vs. noble gas might be a bit irrelevant). Plus, the fact that octarine is ‘the colour of magic’ makes it seem like a more fitting tribute, this being, as I mentioned above, the title of Terry Pratchett’s first ever Discworld book.